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“Maḥmūd” and “Laudable”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
It is common knowledge that the term used to denote the fluid product of suppuration at the site of an infection of tissue is “pus”. Less well known, perhaps, is the use of the term qualified by the adjective “laudable”. This is hardly surprising since even in medical circles “laudable pus” is nowadays rather an expression familiar to historians of medicine than a terminological commonplace currently circulating among practitioners of the art. Prior to World War II, however, the expression seems to have been common enough in popular parlance; it was part of the vocabulary of folk-medicine. Moreover, it is worth noting that in 1939 it still merited inclusion (s.v. “pus”) in Gould's Pronouncing medical dictionary. In that work it is defined as “a whitish, inodorous pus, formerly thought to be essential to healing of wounds”. Before proceeding to our main focus of interest it is important to point out that such a definition reflects the position of Galenic thinking and not that of the more advanced practitioners of 19th-century medicine. In the age of Lister (1827–1912) laudable pus was bluish-green matter characterized by the presence of what we now know to be a natural antibiotic, namely pyocyanin, generated by the organism Pseudomonas pyocyanea. Nowadays no pus is considered “laudable”, and the expression, to all intents and purposes, went out with Listerian surgery. So much for the purely medical aspect of the question.
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References
1 Professor L. P. Harvey tells me that he remembers the expression being used in London of the '30's by laymen reassuring the anxious mothers of children with boils and minor wounds to knees, elbows, etc.
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3 For confirmation of this I am indebted to Professor P. J. Collard of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Manchester.
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